Tag Archive: cat fish

By Bill Davis

Maryland

Photo: Captain Larry Jarboe – “Bill is a true master catter. Of course, I taught him everything he knows about catching catfish in the Chesapeake watershed… I miss having a fishing buddy who knows his knots.”

Yesterday, My wife, son, and I spent the afternoon snorkeling and Wavewalking behind Grecian Dry Rocks. This shallow reef in the Florida Keys Marine Sanctuary does a pretty good job of acting as a breakwater on low tide. The water is perfectly comfortable and crystal clear. The W700 is a fine snorkel tender and will make a great lobster scout skiff when the season begins in August.

I am looking forward to combining swimming with Wavewalking to burn off the calories I gained during the commercial fishing season. It is pretty hard for a commercial fisherman not to eat up the profit.

On the way home, we stopped at a patch reef and caught dinner in a few minutes.

As much as I enjoy catching those Blue Cats in Maryland, it is nice to be home.

Please, feel free to visit. The fleet of Wavewalks is ready to transport you to grand adventures.

Yesterday, I took advantage of a calm, relatively warm day in December to make a morning run to Mallows Bay on the Potomac. The fog was just lifting as I launched the W500.

I canoe style paddled past the “Ghost Ship” and anchored in the flats just inside the river channel north of the mouth of Mallows Bay Creek. The incoming tide was as I had planned according to the Mayland DNR “Tide Finder” tables. Pretty soon, I was hooking up and using my rubber boots to push the Blue Cats behind me which was in the forward “foc’scles” of the twin hulls.

Sliding the big cats past my legs was a challenge in the Wavewalk but would have been impossible in a cockpit style kayak. A SOT kayak would have capsized.

I looked back after catching a Baker’s Dozen of medium to big Blue Catfish and noticed the tips of my W500 front hulls were touching the surface of the river.

The tide was still coming in as I eased up the anchor and gingerly paddled home with a couple hundred pounds of catfish chilling in the cat-a-yak.

Took the W500 for a trip to open water in the Potomac River. The cooler weather has driven the Blue Catfish from the sheltered creeks to the edge of the river channel. I learned a few tricks about catfishing in the Wavewalk that will up the catch of cats on future expeditions. Zero fuel was expended. I paddled. And, I only used 5 dollars in bait, a third of which I gave to a father and his two sons who needed a little help. Blue Catfish are probably the most predatory invasive fish in the Chesapeake Watershed. Maryland DNR (Dept. of Nat. Resources) says to catch and keep all you can. I take that as a mission statement.